Part 12

“I mean, my dear Madam,” answered he, “to have a little conversation with you upon a subject of great importance to us both, and which I should like to discuss without the possibility of interruption. Know, Madam, that, ever since I first saw you, I have fondly, madly loved you. You are become indispensable to my existence; and it depends upon you whether I shall hereafter be the most happy or the most miserable of men.”

“Mr Cayley,” cried the lady, “what foolery is this? You are not in your senses—you have indulged too much in liquor. For heaven’s sake, go home; and to-morrow you will have forgot that such ideas ever possessed your brain.”

“No, never, my angel!” cried he, “can I forget that I have seen and loved you. I might sleep for ages; and, if I awakened at all, it would be with your image imprinted as strongly as ever upon my heart. You now see a man prepared for the most desperate courses in order to obtain you. Listen for a moment. In the neighbourhood, a coach stands ready to carry us far from every scene where you have hitherto been known. Consent, and I procure for you (which is now within my power) a reversal of your father’s attainder. You shall again possess the domains where your fathers for ages back have been held in almost regal veneration, and where you spent the pleasant years of your own youth. Deny me, and to-morrow your reputation is blasted for ever. The least plausible tale, you well know, would be received and believed by society, if told respecting Mrs Macfarlane.”

“Profligate wretch!” exclaimed the unfortunate lady; “can I believe my ears when they tell me that such wickedness exists in a human bosom? Look, Sir, at this infant—were there no principles of virtue within me to dictate a contemptuous rejection of your proposals, do you think that I could leave this innocent to pine and die under the cold neglect of strangers, or to survive to a less blessed life with the stigma of a disgraced mother fixed for ever upon her? Were I the basest woman that ever lived, as you seem to think me, would nature permit so awful a violation of her laws? Could I leave my child, and not next moment be struck dead by fire from heaven for my crime? The alternative, indeed, is awful. Well you know the point upon which I am most easily affected. Base, however, as you avow yourself, I cannot yet suppose that you could be guilty of a trick so worthy of the devil himself, as to blast the reputation, where you could not fix the real cause of infamy.”

“Do not flatter yourself too much on that score,” rejoined Cayley; “you do not now see a man actuated by ordinary principles. I am tortured and confounded by an impetuous passion, which you have excited. If you take from me all hope of a consent to my first proposal, I must endeavour to bring you into my power by the second. To-morrow, did I say? Nay, I will go this night, and tell every man I know that you are the slave of my passion. Not a lady in Edinburgh but will know of it to-morrow before she has left her pillow. You will _then_, I think, see the necessity of consenting to the scheme of flight which I now put into your power.”

He pronounced these words in such a disordered and violent manner, that the unhappy lady sat for some time unable to reply. She hardly recovered her senses till she heard the outer door clang behind him, as he went upon the demoniac purpose which he had threatened.

The first place that Mr Cayley went to was John’s Coffeehouse, a fashionable tavern in the Parliament Square, where he found a large group of his dissolute young friends, drinking claret out of silver stoups. The company was in an advanced stage of intoxication and riot, very much to the annoyance, apparently, of a few smaller knots of decent citizens, who were indulging in some more moderate potations after the fatigues of the day, and endeavouring to understand as much as they could of the London Intelligencer, the Flying Post, and other little sheets of news which lay upon the various tables. “Well, Cayley,” cried one of the young roisterers, “come and tell us how you are getting on now with the fair lady over the way—husband not at home—must be making great advances, I suppose?” “Make yourself quite at ease on that subject; I _am_ so, I assure you.” This he said in so significant a tone, that it was at once understood. A flood of raillery, however, was immediately opened upon him; no one would believe what he said, or rather implied; and thus, as they designed, he was drawn to make much more explicit declarations of his supposed triumph. No attempt was made by himself or others to conceal the subject of their conversation from the rest of the individuals present. It was understood distinctly by the sober citizens above mentioned, some of whom shrugged their shoulders, knocked their cocked hats firmly down upon their heads, took staff in hand, and strode consequentially and indignantly out of the room. As Cayley had predicted, the whole affair was blazoned abroad before next morning.

Mrs Macfarlane, as might be supposed, enjoyed little sleep after the agitations of the preceding evening. She could hardly believe that anything so wicked as what had been threatened by Mr Cayley could be perpetrated by a being in human shape; but yet, recollecting the extraordinary state in which he seemed to be, she could not altogether assure herself of the contrary. In the forenoon she went to pay a visit in a distant part of the town; and she could not help remarking, that while she seemed to have become an object of additional interest to the male sex, the ladies, even those with whom she had formerly been on terms of civil recognition, averted their eyes from her, with an expression, as she thought, of contempt.

The lady upon whom she called received her in the coldest manner, and, on an explanation being asked, did not hesitate to mention what she had heard as the town’s talk that morning, namely, that Mr Cayley professed himself to be her favoured lover. The unfortunate lady burst into a passion of tears and lamentations at this intelligence, protested her innocence a thousand times, and declared herself to be only the victim of a profligate; but still she saw that she did not produce an entirely exculpatory effect upon the mind of her friend. She went home in a state of distress bordering on despair. Her early misfortunes through the severity of the government; her dependent situation in the houses of her kinsfolk; her unhappy marriage to a man she could never love; and, finally, the cruel coldness with which she had been treated by her former friends in the days of her depression, all recurred upon her mind, and united with the more awful grief which had now overtaken her, prepared her mind for the most desperate resolutions.

Early in the afternoon she sent a note to Mr Cayley, requesting, in the usual terms, the favour of his company. The receipt of her billet threw him into transports of joy, for he believed that his scheme had already taken effect, and that she was now prepared to accede to his proposals. He therefore dressed himself in his best style, and at the proper hour (he felt too secure of his prey to go sooner) walked across the street to his appointment. He was shown into a room at the back of the house, where he had never before been, and where there was little furniture besides a picture of Mrs Macfarlane, painted by Sir John Medina, an Italian artist who long practised his trade at the Scottish capital. This portrait, which he began to gaze upon with all the enthusiasm of a lover, represented his mistress in a style and manner strikingly beautiful. The utmost serenity, united with the utmost innocence, shone in those sweetly noble features. The fair open brow glowed like the summer sky, calmly and cloudlessly beautiful. The eyes shone with the lustre of gladness and intelligence, and the whole expression was resolved into an exquisite and killing smile. The lover stood in a sort of transport before this image of all he held dear on earth, as if he were yielding to an idolatrous contemplation of its extraordinary loveliness, when the door was opened—and behold the original! Instead of the voluptuous smile which shone on the canvass of Medina, a Beautiful Fury stood before him—a Hecate not yet grown old. He started with horror; for not only did she bear in her countenance the most threatening ensigns of passion, but she carried in her hand two large pistols, one of which she held extended to him, while with the other hand she locked the door behind her, at the same time keeping a watchful and glaring eye upon her victim.

“Wretch,” she said, “you have ruined one who never did you wrong. You have destroyed me as completely as if you had stretched me lifeless beneath your hand. More than this, you have rendered others who are dear to me unhappy for ever. My child—you have deprived her of the nurture of a mother; you have fixed upon her name a stain which will never be washed out. And yet for all this, society, cruel as it is to the victims, provides no punishment—hardly even any censure—to the criminal. Were it now my will to permit you, you might walk away scatheless from the fair scene you have ravaged, with nothing to disturb your triumph, but the lamentations of so many broken hearts. You shall not, however, enjoy this triumph—for here you shall die!”

Cayley had stood for a few moments, gazing alternately at her face and at the weapon she held extended towards him. He heard her address as if he had heard it not. But at the last word, he recovered a little of his presence of mind, and made an effort to approach her. She at that moment fired, but without effect. The effort of drawing the trigger had depressed the muzzle of the weapon, and the ball entered the floor at his feet. She lost not an instant to present and fire the other, the shot of which penetrated his breast, and he fell next moment before her, with but one indistinct murmur of agony—and then all was still.

One brief embrace to her child—a moment at the toilet to arrange her travelling dress, which she had previously prepared, and the beautiful murderess was ready to fly. She instantly left town for the south, and, as already mentioned, received shelter and concealment in the house of her distant kinsman, Sir John Swinton. How long she was there protected, is not known, but it was probably as long as the search of justice continued to be in the least eager. It was always understood, by those aged persons who knew her story, and from whom the preceding facts have chiefly been derived, that she ultimately escaped to some remote continental state, where she was supported by contributions from her relations. So closes one of the most tragical tales that stain the domestic annals of Scotland during the last century.

THE DOWNDRAUGHT.

Side by side with _victims_, might be placed the kindred species _downdraughts_, who are only different from the accident of their having friends who will rather be _weighed down_ by them to the very earth—to the grave itself—than permit them to sink by themselves. The downdraught is in reality a victim, and one of the darkest shade, being generally a person totally worthless in character, and abandoned in habits; but then he has not altogether cut the cables which bound him to his native grade in society—he has not all forgot himself to disgrace—he is still domesticated with his friends—he has a mother, or a wife, or a brother, or a sister, or perhaps an old aunt, who will try to keep him in food and clean linen, and, having lost all hope of his ever being actively good, will do anything for him, if he will only preserve a neutrality, and not be positively evil. He is a victim in appearance (always excepting the clean shirt), but he enjoys the happy superiority over that class, of having an open door to fly to when he pleases, and either a kind relation, who considers him “only a little wild in the meantime,” or else one who, for the sake of decent appearances, will endeavour to patch up all his peccadiloes, and even be tyrannised over by him, rather than shock society by an open rupture. The personal tendencies of a downdraught to victimization are strong as the currents of the great deep, but he is withheld from it by others. He has always some anchorage or other upon decent life, to keep him back from the gulf to which he would otherwise hurry on. In many cases, the very kindness and indulgence of friends was the original cause of his becoming a downdraught. He had every thing held to his head. He was encouraged in his pretences of headaches as an excuse for staying away from school. When afterwards an apprentice, he was permitted to break off, on the score of being compelled to put on fires and sweep out the shop. Or, perhaps, it was from none of those causes. Possibly, he was just one of those persons who seem to be totally destitute of all perception of the terms upon which men are permitted to exist in this world; that is, that they are either to be so fortunate as to have “their fathers born before them,” so that they may accede to wealth without exertion, or must else do something to induce their fellow-creatures to accord them the means of livelihood without beggary. That many persons are really born without this great leading faculty, is unfortunately but too indisputable; and, assuredly, they are as proper inmates for a lunatic asylum as more frantic madmen; for what is the use of reason, or even of talent, without the desire of exerting it, either in one’s own behalf, or in behalf of mankind? The terms of existence we allude to are expressed in the text of Scripture, “By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn thy bread;” so that the man must be considered a kind of heretic, as well as a fool, who will not, or can not, understand them. Yet the fact is so, that many men arrive at maturity with either a sense of these conditions of life, more or less imperfect, or no sense of them at all. They perhaps conceive themselves to be born to keep down the pavement of Prince’s Street with boots one inch and a half deep in the heel, or to fumigate the air of that elegant street with cigars at three shillings per dozen; but that is the utmost extent to which their notions of the purposes of life ever extend. These men, of course, are predestined downdraughts. We see them already with our mind’s eye, exhausting the kindness and patience of a brother, or a wife, yea almost of a mother, with their idle and dissolute habits—dragging those relations slowly but surely down into misery and disgrace—and only in the meantime saved from being kicked out of doors, as they deserve, not by any regard for merits of their own, for they have none, but by the tenderness of those relations for their own reputation.

A decent citizen, of the name of Farney, retired about five-and-twenty years ago from active life, and, planting himself in a neat villa a little way beyond the southern suburbs of Edinburgh, resolved to do nothing all the rest of his life but enjoy the ten or twelve thousand pounds which he had made by business. He was a placid, inoffensive old man, only somewhat easy in his disposition, and, therefore, too much under the control of his wife, who unfortunately was a person of a vulgarly ambitious character. The pair had but one child—a daughter, Eliza Farney—the toast of all the apprentices in the South Bridge, and really an elegant, and not unaccomplished young lady. The only object which Mr and Mrs Farney now had in life, besides that of enjoying all its comforts, was the disposal of this young lady in marriage. Whenever there is such a thing as ten thousand pounds connected with the name of a young lady, there is generally a great deal more fuss made about it than when the sum is said to exist in any other shape or circumstances. It is important in the eyes of all the young men who think themselves within shot of it. It is important in the eyes of all the young women who have to lament that they do not possess similar advantages. It is important in the eyes of all the fathers and mothers of sons, who think themselves within range of it. And, lastly, it is important, immensely important indeed, in the eyes of parties, young lady, mother and father, sister or brother, who have anything to say in the disposal of it. Money in this shape, one would almost think, is of a different value from money in any other: the exchange it bears against cash in business, or cash in the prospect of him who knows he can win it, is prodigious. At the very lowest computation, a thousand pounds in the purse of a young lady is worth ten thousand in the stock of a man of trade. Nay, it is astonishing what airs we have known a few hundred pounds of this kind put on in respect, or rather disrespect, of decent people, who were almost winning as much in the year. In fact, the fiddle-faddle about the disposal of an heiress is a great farce, and never fails to put either the parties concerned in the disposal, or else the candidates for the acquisition, into a thousand shabby and selfish attitudes. It is hard to say if the young lady herself is the better for it all. The only _certain_ effect of her possessing a fortune, is, that it deprives her of ever having the pleasing assurance, given to most other women, that she is married for her own sake alone. Sincere love is apt to retire from such a competition, through the pure force of modesty, its natural accompaniment; and the man most apt to be successful is he who, looking upon the affair as only a mercantile adventure, pursues it as such, and only hopes to be able to fall in love after marriage.

It happened that Eliza Farney was loved, truly and tenderly loved, by a young man of the name of Russell, whose parents had been acquainted with the Farneys in their earlier and less prosperous days, but were now left a little behind them. Young Russell had been the playmate of Eliza in their days of childhood; he had read books with her, and taught her to draw, in their riper youth; and all the neighbours said, that, but for the brilliant prospects of Miss Farney, she could not have found a more eligible match. Russell, however, was still but the son of a poor man. He was himself struggling in the commencement of a business, which he had begun with slender means, in order to sustain the declining fortunes of his parents. His walk in life was much beneath the scope of his abilities, much beneath his moral deserts; but, under a strong impulse of duty, he had narrowed his mind to the path allotted to him, instead of attempting to do justice to his talents by entering upon any higher and more perilous pursuit. Thus, as often happens, an intellect and character, which might have brightened the highest destinies, were doomed to a sphere all unmeet for them, where they were in a manner worse than lost, as they only led to a suspicion which was apt to be unfavourable to the prospects of their possessor, namely, that he was likely to be led, by his superior tastes, into pursuits to which his fortune was inadequate, or into habits which would shipwreck it altogether. Russell looked upon Eliza Farney, and despaired. He saw her, as she advanced into womanhood, recede gradually from his sphere in society, and enter into one more suitable to her father’s improving fortunes, into which it was not for him to intrude. Eliza had, perhaps, entertained at one time a girlish fondness for him; but it was not of so strong a character as to resist the ambitious maxims of her mother, and the sense of her own importance and prospects, which began to act upon her in her riper years.

“Amongst the rest young Edwin sighed, But never talked of love.”

Some appearance of coldness, which he saw, or fancied he saw, in her conduct towards him, caused his proud and pure nature to shrink back from the vulgar competition which he saw going forward for the hand of “the heiress.” It was not that the fondest wishes of his heart were met with disappointment—perhaps he could have endured that—but he writhed under the reflection, that external circumstances should separate hearts that once were allied, and that no conscious purity of feeling, no hope of hereafter distinguishing himself by his abilities, was of avail against the selfish and worldly philosophy which dictated his rejection. It was only left for him to retire into the chambers of his own thoughts, and there form such solemn resolutions for improving his circumstances and distinguishing his character, as might hereafter, perhaps, enable him to prove to the cold being who now despised him, how worthy, how more than worthy, perhaps, he was of having enjoyed her affections, even upon the mean calculations by which he was now measured and found wanting.